Short-Short Stories - American Literature

Bite-sized: 50 great short stories, chosen by Hilary Mantel, George Saunders and more

Quick and easily shared, is the short story the form for our times? Hilary Mantel, Mark Haddon and others pick their favourites

11 Very Short Stories You Must Read Immediately

This weekend, Lydia Davis—crowned master of the very short story, not to mention a preeminent translator of classic French literature—turns 70. Davis didn’t invent flash fiction, but she is c…

21 Very Short and Addicting Stories You Can Read Online

It can be extremely hard to find time to read these days. With our lives cluttered with work, school, life, and new amazing episodes of…

The Aleph (short story)

"The Aleph" (Spanish: El Aleph) is a short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. First published in September 1945, it was reprinted in the short story collection The Aleph and Other Stories in 1949, and revised by the author in 1974.

National Cowboy Poetry Gathering

A week of poetry, music, dancing, workshops, exhibits, conversations, food and fellowship, rooted in tradition but focused on today’s rural West.

Social Dramas and Stories about Them

Victor Turner, Social Dramas and Stories about Them, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 7, No. 1, Autumn, 1980, On Narrative

Kindred Stories

Kindred Stories is an Houston-based bookstore committed to celebrating the works of Black authors and artisans.

Two reflections on Dickens's Little Dorrit, by Leslie Wilson

I'm listening to Little Dorrit as an audiobook at the moment, which will see me through quite a lot of cooking and baking. This is not a com...

Tradition and the Individual Talent

Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

Upstart & Crow

Upstart & Crow exists to share stories and to support the literary arts in Vancouver and beyond. We develop transformative programs, host conversations and launch projects that enable storytellers to create and share exciting new work. We partially fund these initiatives through bookstores that champion independent presses and underdiscovered works. Find event rental and launch information.

The Anatomy of Story

”The Anatomy Of Story is concrete and practical without resorting to simplistic ‘Three Act Structure’ screenwriting clichés. It will be an indispensable guide to writing your first great script.” —Larry Wilson, co-writer /co-producer of Beetljuice and co-writer of The Addams Family THE ANATOMY OF STORY 22 STEPS TO BECOMING A MASTER STORYTELLER Faber & Faber launches John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller—a new Bible not just for screenwriters, but for any writer crafting the perfect story. Taking as his examples Jaws, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tootsie, The Great Gatsby, The Godfather, Chinatown, and A Christmas Carol, among many others, Truby illustrates in The Anatomy of Story (Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) what makes a great story and how to create that story, focusing on plot and premise, theme, characters, moral development, and crafting the kind of ending that brings readers and audiences back again and again. Additionally, Truby offers seven key story structure steps, which are the major stages of a story’s development and of the dramatic code under its surface. The Anatomy of Story is a step-by-step guide to constructing the best story possible—be it a screenplay, short story, or novel. Truby, who has taught his twenty-two-step Great Screenwriting and Genre classes to more than 20,000 students worldwide, is available to discuss: Top 10 mistakes writers make about story. Five best and worst questions about screenwriting. How the 22-step-approach is different from the 3-act structure. Five unique story elements of blockbuster films. Five best techniques of character and plot. John Truby is Hollywood’s premier story consultant and founder of Truby’s Writers Studio. He has worked as a story consultant and script doctor for Disney Studios, Sony Pictures, FOX, and HBO, among others. Booklist  “ Hollywood story consultant Truby commits his vast knowledge of screenwriting and storytelling to the page in this handy guide for aspiring writers of all types. Truby delves into the setup, from basic structure to the premise and the depth behind it. From there, he moves into character, emphasizing the importance of not only the hero but also the characters in the story who aid and oppose him. Truby illustrates the importance of setting to the story and how careful plotting is needed to weave the elements of the story together. He cautions that plot is not incidental and requires careful management and timely revelations. Although most of his examples are from movies, such as Tootsie, The Godfather, and Star Wars, Truby also draws from novels and plays, and his advice is applicable not only to the hopeful screenwriter but to the aspiring novelist as well. A comprehensive guide to writing stories of all kinds, Truby’s tome is invaluable to any writer looking to put an idea to paper.” —Kristine Huntley Tweet

In The Imagined Classroom: Lanterns

Teaching Fictions #5

Reading, and Understanding Media

A guidebook, and poetry more than prose, Marshall McLuhan's 1964 work remains one of our best resources for exploring the nature and effects of new media. It's not an easy read, so I'm going to help.

Robert Hanks · On Putting Things Off

Job gone, I sat around trying to write, managing bits and pieces, but earning very little. And then my marriage drifted away too, leaving me, in Alan Partridge’s phrase, clinically fed-up boo-hoo. My wife, having said she would leave, took two and a half years to find a way of doing it – there is a small consolation in not being the only procrastinator in the relationship. While this was going on the LRB commissioned me to write about Richard Hughes, who wrote A High Wind in Jamaica. I like Hughes and it seemed like a job I could get on with. I cheerfully settled to the research, reading the novels I hadn’t read, rereading the ones I had. Then I started writing, or that’s what I told myself: some paragraphs, some sentences, a sketch of a plan, then some rewriting, rearranging, scrubbing, more rewriting, more scrubbing, pauses to reconsider. Then I did some more research: the short stories, the children’s stories, the poems and plays, the journalism, Richard Perceval Graves’s biography, then back to the rewriting …

William Blake: the scourge of the tyrants

Discover and share books you love on Goodreads.